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Monday, July 25, 2016

Mary Jane Veloso won’t be in Indonesia’s next round of executions – official

JAKARTA - Mary Jane Veloso, convicted in Indonesia for drug smuggling and sentenced to death, will not be among the first round of executions carried out when capital punishment is resumed after a lull, the attorney general said on Friday.

Indonesia imposed a moratorium on executions for five years before resuming them in 2013. It provoked international outrage in April last year with the execution of eight drug traffickers, seven of them foreigners.

After the outcry, authorities said they were postponing executions while the government focussed on reviving he economy. But President Joko Widodo's administration has this year pledged to resume executions by firing squad.

Veloso got a last-minute reprieve last year, following a request from Manila after an employment recruiter, whom Veloso had accused of planting drugs in her luggage, gave herself up to police in the Philippines.

"We are still waiting on the legal process in the Philippines, which we have to respect."

Prasetyo has said 16 prisoners will be executed this year, including nationals from Nigeria and Zimbabwe, but has declined to give a specific time frame. That number will be more than doubled next year, he said.

Indonesia has declared a "drug emergency" and vowed no mercy for drug traffickers.

Authorities have not given a breakdown of the numbers of foreigners on death row but citizens of France, Britain and the Philippines are known to be among them. — Reuters